Inauguration Day – Other Bits and Pieces

(bumped up by Susan)

If you haven’t heard, today is inauguration day. Since soooooo many people can cover that event soooooo much better than I, I’m looking at a few other, smaller news bits that might get lost in the shuffle.

Well, that was the plan. But John Kass had to write something soooo great I have to include it.

Venturing out among the gentle Hopium Eaters here without an antidote is quite risky, what with journalists from every state about to eagerly witness Tuesday’s historic inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama and bathe in symbolic waters.

For protection, I slipped some de Tocqueville in my pocket, the wise Frenchman warning about 170 years ago that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

Nah. That’ll never happen. BTW, you really should go see that teapot museum here in NC. . .

But then I realized that if spotted, I’d be denounced, perhaps with howling and finger-pointing in the fashion of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” So to get into the proper, journalist-eyes-glazed-over mood, I read an op-ed piece in The New York Times titled “Magic and Realism.”

“But this 47-year-old man of mixed race, whose very name—O-Ba-Ma—has the three-syllable universality of a child’s lullaby, has always had something of the providential about him, a global figure who looks more like the guy at the local bodega than the guys on dollar bills. That’s the magic.”

That’s the magic?

I can’t imagine Obama reading that and not retching, wondering what to do with so many adoring scribes, so dogmatically secular, yet eager to be led by political holy men, or sorcerers.

Kass introduces us to a Chicago worthy named Dr. Black, an AA with a more realistic view of Obama. He notes the historic aspect of Obama’s ascension to power and how proud the AA community is.

But a teacher never stops teaching, and Dr. Black offered me a lesson the day before Obama took the oath of office.

“I remember when I was a little boy, and my grandmother, who was born in 1847, was with me. And I’d be doing something, perhaps even some mischief, talking to her, and she’d say something I never forgot.”

What did she tell you?

“She’d say, ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying because what you’re doing is talking so loud.’ ”

Perfect.

Pretty good, Kass.

2) Politico says Cornyn may temporarily block HRC’s SOS nomination.

Hillary Clinton has rejected a request by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to increase oversight of her husband’s foundation — so Cornyn is expected to scuttle Democratic attempts to confirm her as Secretary of State today by a voice vote, sources say.

Grandstanding, but to what end?

3) Good credit? Never missed a payment? Still in business? Not if some banks have anything to say about it. From the NYT.

Dave Brown, one of this city’s best-known home builders, had kept his head above water through the housing downturn, not missing a single interest payment on his loans.

So he was confounded a few months back when one of his banks, spooked by the decline in his company’s revenue, suddenly demanded millions of dollars in additional collateral to continue carrying loans on his projects.

He was unable to come up with the money, and in October, JPMorgan Chase foreclosed on five of his developments. Shortly thereafter, Brown Family Communities, 33 years in the business, decided to shut its doors.
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“The reality is, we’re seeing conditions in home construction and home finance that are the worst since the Depression,” said Steve Fritts, associate director of risk management policy at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the government agency that insures bank deposits.

As with so many things about this financial crisis, the specifics are complicated. Still, watching businesses go under like this ought to worry everyone.

4) Bob Herbert now says Lyndon Johnson is a worthy civil rights figure. Herbert imagines a gathering of past civil rights leaders to see BO inaugurated.

And then imagine a tall white man being ushered into their presence, and the warm smiles of recognition from the big four — and probably tears — for someone who has been shamefully neglected by his nation and his party, Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson’s contributions to the betterment of American life were nothing short of monumental. For blacks, he opened the door to the American mainstream with a herculean effort that resulted in the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He followed up that bit of mastery with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Remember when even the mention of Johnson’s role in civil rights legislation was racist? Well, I guess it’s only racist if spoken of by a Clinton.

TPM talked about how HRC was misquoted in several “professional” media outlets during the primary.

Let’s say you were putting together a story about a very, very controversial thing that a politician said. Would you…(a) Run an edited version of the quote that has sparked some argument about whether it’s a distortion of the original; or…(b) Run the full quote, so readers can know exactly what was said and make up their own minds as to the meaning?

The latter, right? Not if you work at The New York Times. For the second time, the paper has run a truncated version of something Hillary said about Martin Luther King that has become a major campaign issue — even though the full transcript has been available for days.

The NYT, had this wonderfully researched opinion piece at the time:

In Mrs. Clinton’s zeal to make the case that experience (hers) is more important than inspirational leadership (Mr. Obama’s), she made some peculiar comments about the relative importance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson to the civil rights cause. She complimented Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric, but said: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. … It took a president to get it done. ”

Why Mrs. Clinton would compare herself to Mr. Johnson, who escalated the war in Vietnam into a generational disaster, was baffling enough. It was hard to escape the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change.

Also at the time, Herbert characterized Clinton’s reminder of Johnson’s role as a “cheap shot” at MLK.

And there was Mrs. Clinton telling the country we don’t need “false hopes,” and taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Nice, Bob Herbert. Still a tool. I guess only you get to mention Johnson’s role in this.

5) In a wonderful post about political Hollywood, Big Hollywood talks about celebrities’ new found patriotism and videos about how they plan to contribute to America now that they feel their opinions “matter.”

President Bush was not holding back [Demi] Moore from “free[ing] one million people from slavery in the next five years.” Nor was he holding back the Obama-biquitous Will.I.Am from “chang[ing] how [he] live[s].” Ditto: Aaron Ekhart (”To be a better person,”) Marisa Tomei (”To integrate into my heart what I already know in my head which is that we are all in this together,”) Kutcher (”To the abolition to 21st century slavery,”) Anthony Kiedis (”To be of service to Barack Obama,”) P. Diddy (” pledge to turn the lights off, cause I used to leave the lights on but we want to conserve energy so I’ma turn the lights off, you turn the lights off,) and all-in-unison (”Because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek.”)

Missing are pledges not to kiss the ring of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and other pledged enemies of America. Nor are there pledges not to make movies that glorify these tyrants. Nor are there pledges to take seriously that we are at war, will continue to be at war under President Obama and that our precious and under-appreciated military is fighting an avowed and evil enemy — so that, among other things, Hollywood can continue to make decadent crap that actually motivates our enemy to fight us harder!
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Yet, hating the president doesn’t mean one can’t still help out the country in a great time of need. But many went to foreign countries and demeaned it instead. Called those that disagreed with them rubes and hicks. The elitism of the celebrities against flyover country America could not have been more pronounced. They made a boat-load of movies that affirmed this narrow and patronizing world view.

And now they want us back.

We’re all Americans — NOW.
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Amazing that Geldof and Bono could valiantly fight their battles and serve humanity without being paralyzed by the Leader of the Free World 2000-2008’s all-encompassing awfulness.

Worth a read and a bookmark. Looks like Hollywood elites are just as capable of jumping on a bandwagon as any other person. You know, I just don’t think something is important until Diddy says it is. I’m all aquiver to hear his next suggestion for conserving, well, anything.

6) Someone believes Obama will care and do something about the low numbers of women in science. From the NYT.

Dr. Mason and other legal experts suggest that President Obama might be able to change things significantly for young women in science — and young men — by signing an executive order that would provide added family leave and parental benefits to the recipients of federal grants, a huge pool of people that includes many research scientists.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

7) The Washington Times has an article about an Al Qaeda base manufacturing nonconventional weapons.

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

“We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said.

Bummer this story drops on inauguration day.